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Glass is complicated as a design element, give it time
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As a designer (a legitimate one that studied typography for 7+ years many moons ago in a very well known art school) and have since done major work over the past 10 years, I will say that I can be objective about design and functionality without being a fan boy. I am brand agnostic, but I will say that Apple has the best UI/UX team in the world, much better than Google (Android). FYI I have also worked with Google's internal teams so I know how things function.
Now, don't get me wrong, I am not a huge fan of LG, but my point was that Apple is doing this deliberately because they want the content to be front and center vs having UI cover the content. Phone design has matured (physical form and software UI) so now it's about consuming content. That's what most people do anyway. That is what Apple is trying to do, the translucent/liquid stuff is their way in to that direction. I feel like I am repeating myself, but it's clear that is what they are doing.
LG is what we have at the moment, and we were given that. There is no going back. I do think that they can make the LG more apparent and try not to dim it as much, and it does feel cluttered overall as typography over content is always hard to manage without dimming/etc. To me there is just a lot going on, and LG becomes more maximalist than minimalist. Using the current Dev beta, I quickly learned how to navigate since buttons/etc are all in the same place anyway and not much has moved around.
Now, do I think LG is the end all be all to innovation? Not at all. I do like that it is unifying all of Apple's devices, though, because my Mac looked different than my iPhone and I use both a lot with continuity all the time. I like a lot of the new features they introduced under the hood in iOS26, I think some of those things are very helpful from day to day usage. Now could those features have been introduced without LG introduction? Sure.
I am not totally seeing your argument, I get you don't like LG, that's fine. I wrote that iOS 7 had the same exact reaction, actually much worse than LG. People were going insane at the time and I remember it vividly, then they were forced to live with it and it got better over time and of course cluttered as new features were added.
Transparent UI has been a thing for a long time, if done right, looks great. It's a direction into minimalism, geared toward content consumption and the dissipation/removal of UI elements that are taking up screen real estate.
I mean it’s obvious, right? I suggested this earlier but ppl just laughed at my ideaWhen you can't baffle them with B.S., you dazzle them with brilliance.
Liquid Glass is the brilliance that covers up the A.I. and SIRI B.S. baffle.
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...distract-from-the-ai-disaster-merged.2458893/
I'm not commenting on the quality of either of these design teams, but even the best people in the world can make mistakes. Especially when, if we go by your word, the person leading the design team has seemingly little to no say in what his team puts out.
Yup, I know that this is the justification they gave for their design, but I don't think that rationale really justifies the decisions they've made or fully fits with the reality of what the iPhone UI needs to do. It might work if all a phone did was display video and images, but phones do a lot more. Not everything is content that needs UI to get out of the way, an in those cases liquid glass is a bad solution, and the fix so far seems to be "well, that bit just won't be liquid glass" and so you end up with essentially a bunch of clashing materials, which look awkward.
So basically it's bad but you got used to it? Not exactly inspiring stuff.
Even with liquid glass, they still look different. Some things have become more similar, but they've been working towards that for years. Making things transparent wasn't the only way to achieve this. Hell, they could have kept the same look and feel from iOS 18 and still unified them in the same way. This benefit is not something that comes from liquid glass, it's something that they decided to do alongside liquid glass.
iOS7's redesign actually had benefits though. It reduced the design overhead for developers and brought in more universal elements throughout the OS. It had plenty of its own issues but it also had benefits. My point is that liquid glass as it is today and as Apple has demonstrated and explained it has no concrete benefits that I can see.
The issue here is that you're speaking like you're a UI/UX expert. You're just an end user.
There are teams upon teams doing R&D for years and years before making any final decisions.
This is like you giving feedback to the head of the BMW engine division and telling them how the S55 engine had major flaws.
Now if Apple was a company with zero legacy/care about design, I would totally agree with your hate on what they're doing now.
But my point still stands here, they made this decision to go with LG most likely many years ago, and it's also going back to the roots of what started their evolution with Mac OS X Aqua when Steve came back to Apple and brought NextStep and then eventually their team developed the new skin for the new Mac OS.
The best UI team in the world decided for the second time in history to make an illegible OS. But it’s fine guys, in three years you’ll get used to it. Trust me, I’m a pro designer and you’re just an end user. Fall back in line and stop complaining.
I mean, unless you worked on this iOS redesign then you're also just an end user. Given that I have experience in UI and UX roles (not specifically as a designer, but with extensive collaboration with designers) I think I have enough of an understanding to discuss the topic on a forum.
And hell, even if I'm just an end user, I still have eyes. I can see obvious problems even if I don't have the immediate solution to them. To put it another way, I don't have to be a Michelin star chef to know when my food is too salty.
And? Surely you've heard of the phrase "design by committee"? Just because a lot of hands touch a project doesn't mean it can't be be a mistake. Look at the butterfly keyboard. I'm sure a ton of people worked on that and it was trash. Look at iTunes Ping. A ton of people had input on that disaster. Professionals can make mistakes too.
I don't know anything about cars, but I assume you're saying I'm telling an expert about something I'm not an expert in? To which I would say "so what?". If they're the expert, they should have picked up on those issues or expected that critique. A problem is a problem regardless of who notices it first.
Not hate. Objective criticism backed up with pretty straightforward reasoning.
The difference, again, is that Aqua had a point. Go back and watch Jobs introduce it and explain step by step the functional reasons for the design choices. This has been my point all along and you keep ignoring it. Liquid glass is change without beneficial purpose. That's my issue. I don't care that it's ugly, I care that it's broken. You may be confident that it will be fixed quickly, but I remember how long it took to iron out some of the mistakes in iOS7.
Stop judging this on the past and judge it on the design choices they're putting in front of you. Historic design success means nothing when I can't read a text message.
Glass is transparent in real life. There is a reason we don't print transport maps on train windows and put road signs on double glazing in the real world. It is an impractical material for anything other than letting light in. UX designers don't seem to understand that the transparent displays used by Hollywood are so you can see the face of a person through the screen rather than for their practicality.
What Apple should have concentrated its design team on doing is solving the inherent accessibility flaws within iOS (and Android) that resulted from stretching the OS of small screens to fit larger ones. The desktop paradigm where you just add more space to the middle doesn't work; you have to think about the ergonomics of the device in question. Its ok that people prefer larger screens but its not ok that things are outside the reach of your thumb. You can't assume everyone has an extra hand free or that they even have one to start with.
I have worked in Product Design for nearly 30 years in one form or another and the basic ignorance of device ergonomics from modern UX designers is baffling. They forgot about the relationship between the human and the interface, a lesson Nintendo used for decades to stay ahead of their competition. Yeah, I'm going to put them to rights because the software of a smartphone is an infinite canvas of imagination where things can go wherever they want.
Suggestions? The main issue is that there should be no interactions that require the top half of the display in portrait. On old flip phones and laptops there are no buttons inside the lid for a reason. This means redesigning where notifications and control centre lie. At a basic level the lockscreen stack has the right idea; why not move this to the otherwised unused space below the multitasking card interface with them fanning upwards on a press and hiding just out of sight otherwise? Control centre could be moved to the RH-side of the top-most app in the card stack and replace the camera swipe on the lockscreen.
I never said I'm an expert, I have some experience. In fact, to quote myself: "And hell, even if I'm just an end user, I still have eyes. I can see obvious problems even if I don't have the immediate solution to them." I can point out things that aren't working, that doesn't put the burden of creating a fully working solution on me.
Not really keen to keep having this back and forth though if you're just going to periodically ignore all my points when you don't like the way the discussion is going.
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I was genuinely asking what you would do differently for UI/UX experience in the year 2025 so it doesn't feel outdated.
As I said, I don’t have a full solution.
Off the top of my head, I’d probably start by rethinking some of the layouts rather than just reskinning what’s already there. Maybe bring more controls down near the bottom of the screen (on iOS) where the thumb naturally rests, and explore visual styles that aren’t so reliant on translucency. For the Mac, watch, iPad, etc, who knows. But honestly, that kind of answer would take real time and effort - the kind of time that I’m not really willing to just throw away.
I’m not denying that the team did a lot of work, this was obviusly was a big, complex job. I just think they made some poor choices along the way that led to a bad outcome.
Driving into oncoming traffic is a problem that can be fixed up until the point you crash. Still doesn’t mean that it was a good idea to attempt it.
I don't have to be a 3-Michelin-stars-kitchen-chef to decide to like a meal or not.🤦♂️
Why do you keep insisting the old look is dated and this 20+ year old glass effect is new and modern and not going to age as well as a banana sitting on the counter? So many OSes and apps have tried this before. Just because Apple can do it better, doesn’t make it modern or even good. Everything about Liquid Glass screams “Minority Report was a cool movie.” It’s a really old idea of what the future should look like. Different, yes, but very outdated before it even ships.
It may be a reflection on where we are as a culture. Much of our 'near future' fiction in the last decade has been post-apocalyptic. The root of all this not the desire to burn society down and start again but rather a return to a simpler time, more 2006 than 1806 though when it felt like technology was within control and not controlling us.
Oh these works it is the near-future backstory of Horizon Zero Dawn and Ready Player One that seems to have influenced UI design, with VR and otherwise impossible floaty holograms as the medium of choice. The last great push in sensible UI development was Windows Phone 7 which preceeded and directly influenced Apple's flat design in iOS7 and Google's Material Design in Android 5 and this was all based on transit signage.
I've been working in a relevant field for the better part of two decades. A good interface minimizes cognitive overhead and keeps out of the user's way. Transparent interfaces don't do that. They add visual noise and increase cognitive and perceptual demand. It doesn't matter whether it's pretty or not, and it certainly doesn't matter whether it's a technical achievement. Architects design an awful lot of aesthetically appealing buildings that end up with critical flaws once built because of their design choices. (Fallingwater House, anyone?) The point of the UI is to provide a service to the user, and transparent interfaces are bad at that. That's why people are down on Liquid Glass.
I know you didn't ask my specifically, but I dislike LG so I thought I'd comment anyways...
I would take iOS 18 (yes, even though I will always like iOS 6/10.9 and below) and start adding a bit of color and shapes back into it.
Start with the buttons, add well-defined borders and make the interior color of the button different than the background. NOT macOS LG's weird floating buttons, which make no sense. They look like cut-out pieces of paper, no depth, yet floating above another piece of paper, with the shadows. It's weird. And not iOS LG's buttons which are semitransparent and hard to read.
macOS LG's buttons are strangely large, the bubble/extreme rounded corners/circlification of the buttons make them feel bloated. Ditto with the weird floating, bordered sidebars. These design decisions are just weird and serve no purpose beyond wasting bits of screen space (which adds up).
Speaking of the background color, make it anything but pure white in light mode, dependent on the content it contains. If the content is buttons, or text bubbles, or most app-UI, the background should not be pure white. It's just a bit too bright. iOS 6 and below's Messages app background was a gray-blue, and OS X's app window backgrounds were slightly gray. The iOS 7/Yosemite+ white backgrounds are too bright and harsh, especially looking at the screen all day.
For icons, I'd really prefer if we went in the opposite direction as Apple wants to go. Instead of bare, one-color, single-symbol icons which are vague, boring, sterile, and lifeless, icons should be expressive, descriptive and unique.
This is like saying relationships need work. No good relationship ever needs work.
If your design makes it hard for me to use my device, it doesn't deserve time and effort.
If your design makes it hard for me to use my device, it doesn't deserve time and effort.
Apple should do it the Microsoft wayand learn from Windows Vista and specially from Windows 7
Anyway, Liquid Glass really feels like a diversionary tactic by Apple to get the attention away from the failed Apple intelligence promises.
Anyway, Liquid Glass really feels like a diversionary tactic by Apple to get the attention away from the failed Apple intelligence promises.
No. It’s to distract from the failure to replace Springboard by bolting on even more. The entire home screen/spotlight/app library is a creaky broken mess that needs to be gutted.